Why Buy What You Can Have For Free?

Andy Pettitte, who is costing the Yanks $10 million this year and keeping either Chien-Ming Wang or Phil Hughes from the rotation, had another crappy outing yesterday, falling to scrap-pile pickup Fernando Nieve. I have never been enthusiastic about the Pettitte resigning. Sometimes an embarassment of riches isn't really a long-term benefit. The future of the Yankees lies in Wang and Hughes. Their short-term difficulties, are a sacrifice worth making. How much $ is the difference between a Pettitte and a Nieve really worth?

Another counterintuitive thought for the morning. We've heard a lot of one of my least favorite sports cliches over the past 24 hrs, prompted by the Castillo drop on Friday night: "You've got to make that play" and its almost as awful cousin, "He's got to make that play." Usually uttered by some commentator or couch potato who could never have made that play. That's right. It's easy to forget how routine the routine is in MLB. But catching a wind-blown pop caught in the lights in front of 50,000 fans is simply not an easy thing to do. The amazing thing about MLB is how easy the players make the difficult appear. Now, obviously, Castillo is paid to make that kind of catch, and missing it was a huge, terrible, costly error. Yes, the ball should have been caught. I just hate the cliches.

I hate the cliches too. But if ever there was a play for which they were appropriate, that was it.
The funniest thing was hearing John Sterling talk during yesterday’s game about how big Jeter’s hit was in the ninth, how he “always seems to be in the middle of a big Yankee rally”, and “were it not for him…”. “Rally”? Seriously? I know we mostly consider Sterling a joke at this site, both YF and SF alike, but he never ceases to amaze.

SFJune 14, 2009, 10:55 am

i think the guaranteed money for pettitte is $5m yf, with some incentives thrown in…i’m not sure how easy the incentives will be to get, but for $5m the yanks thought the gamble was worth it…given their track record with sp injuries and free agent busts, i agree with the gamble…i’m not sure i agree with the notion that he’s blocking younger guys…remember when ian kennedy was going to team with hughes and joba?…yuck…wang’s had his chances and he stunk up the place…hughes has had 2 very good starts…other than that he’s been somewhere between ok and mediocre…if anybody’s blocking his “development” it’s wang right now…
about castillo, i guess the thing that makes the play so dramatic was the timing, so everybody jumped all over it and him…i know it’s not his first error, and he’s a gold-glover…normally i wouldn’t think twice about it, but i actually felt bad for the guy…he took a beating in the ny rags that was over the top…
hehe, yeah sterling’s a tool…makes kay seem grounded…but, there’s something twistedly appealing about guys that become caricatures of themselves: sterling, orsillo, gammons, caron, waldman, buck, tim mac…i could go on…

dcJune 14, 2009, 11:32 am

Yes, they’re cliches, and they’re true. I’m pretty sure most people know that’s a difficult play for joe fan, but not for players paid millions.

DaveJune 14, 2009, 11:44 am

The only thing more windblown about that error was in the description I just read of it. Yes, even routine plays can be difficult. Yes, I probably wouldn’t have caught that ball if you gave me 10 chances. BUT of all the bone headed plays I have seen over the last 40 years that cost a team a ballgame, I have NEVER seen one more shocking. Yes it was windblown. yes, it was a pressure situation. The fact is, he was tracking the ball and he thought he had it in his glove. To my way of thinking the error was a mental one, even if it was windblown… more than that, instead of keeping his head in the game situation, and understanding that runners would be going, Castillo compounded the gaffe by soft tossing to 2nd instead of getting up and firing home to at least preserve a tie.
NO excuse, and I’d be willing to bet Castillo will never ever forget that play.

Brian Houk SFJune 14, 2009, 1:30 pm

Perhaps the GM who chose to re-sign Pettitte should resign. (Sorry to play grammar policeman, YF. Feel free to return the shot anytime.)
…
Don’t forget Harry Caray, dc. At the end, he was the worst. And if you could hear Ken Harrelson call a White Sox game, you’d swear off baseball forever.